


Hello Old Man

by dreamer_of_the_impossible



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Action/Adventure, Angst with a Happy Ending, F/M, Father-Daughter Relationship, Hurt/Comfort, kind of father-daughter relationship
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-01-23
Updated: 2016-05-05
Packaged: 2018-05-15 17:28:40
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 8
Words: 22,333
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5793487
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dreamer_of_the_impossible/pseuds/dreamer_of_the_impossible
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Two girls from his future, who deadly remind him of his wife, draw him in a swirl of tangled secrets and impossible adventures.<br/>When a message destroys his efforts to forget his wife, the Doctor is obliged to deal once again with her death, but what if there's more than digital tombs and weary memories?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prelude

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first attempt at writing a passable fanfic, so suggestions and constructive criticism is really appreciate. Also English is not my mother tongue, so I apologise for any mistakes.

_Hello Old Man, need your clever brain here. xxx_

 

That was odd, that was more than odd, that was disturbingly anomalous. It was centuries he hadn't received a message on his psychic card and most of all it had been centuries since he had seen a message with those three x at the end. He knew that that message wasn't hers, she would have never called him Old Man; it pained him, when the message first arrived he immediately thought of her and he waited maybe a little too long before reading it, dwelling on the alluring possibility that could actually be _her_. All hopes vanished in those simple two words " _Old Man_ " and the absence of her trademarking sweetie left him lost and unimpressed, a bitter sorrow making its way back to the surface. 

 

He was old, really old and the thought was just as stupid as much as he was old, but for one moment he truly could have imagined himself running by her side, he could have seen her smirk of triumph once she had saved their lives, after putting them into those sort of crap situations she seemed to enjoy so much. He didn’t even had any preference, really, he would have gladly accepted a maddening young, oblivious, still in university _her_. He wouldn’t have objected, oh no, he actually was more eager than he thought to be picky about which her he could get; because no matter how hard he tried to convince himself otherwise he desired to see her again, even if she hadn’t the faintest clue of what he meant for her. Yes, after years of forgetting and running away, determined not to look back for even a second, he realised how much he had missed her. If he had to be truthful he hadn’t shared a single thought on her for decades, even centuries, but when the slightest hint of her back in his life made his way in his brain, she easily destroyed years of forgetting, years of blissful carelessness of her memory. And now he understood again why he had wanted so hard to delete her from his mind, well that was impossible, but at least he had been able to lock her behind an ironclad door in the recesses of his brain. And now it all came back, like a tsunami devastating everything on its way. It surprised him how he had been able to forget her, now that it seemed like he could smell her scent in the air, or hear her padding barefoot on the console room’s glass, which he didn’t even have anymore. He scornfully smiled to himself, he could remember her laugh but not her voice, he couldn’t even picture the colour of her eyes anymore. He could not remember all those insignificant details about her anymore, he still remembered her face, her body, some of her words, most of their adventures, but he couldn’t remember what this body longed to remember. It wasn’t their grand endeavours he so badly wanted, just those tiny moments when all that mattered was that she was his and he was hers. God, he didn’t even remember how much sugar she liked in her tea, or what she looked like in the morning, when sleep still clouded her eyes and her make up was still not on. It pained him, really, because everything that only him was allowed to know, everything that made him her husband and her his wife was gone. He just had the awareness of the bliss they once shared and of that unique bond that never had ceased to amaze him when she was still alive. He was still conscious about they joy their marriage had brought him, even though there had been hard times, and they absolutely had more than their share of those, still, like she said, he too wouldn’t change a thing of their time together. _Not one line_. He knew she was gradually fading from him and he had been an accomplice to it. He had been too of a coward to cling to her memory, forgetting had been much easier than living with the constant reminder of what he once had and had no more. Eventually she will die away completely, one day all it would remain is her name and the fact that she had been his wife. Maybe one day he will forget how much she had loved him, how much she had sacrificed for him, how much of a failure he had been as a husband and how his inability to show how much she meant to him had led her to die, without even thinking of another possibility. And that is one thing he still remembers: how promptly she had given her life away for him, how easily she had died. What he never had the courage to admit to himself was that he had already killed her that day, when he had answered to that damn question. _Please tell me you know who I am_. If he had to be sincere he knew he had started killing her a long time ago, when all she kept meeting were his younger selves, torturing her with that same question. _Who are you?_

  
That’s it, really, he never went back to her house at Luna nor he went to her final resting place. He never thought he ought to remember her anyway. They are all leaving, had before and surely will in the future, and she had done the same thing. In this she hadn’t been any different from all of his companions and that’s what he actually blames her for. She just left, like everybody else, she, who was different from them, had just followed that oblivious mass of people he once cared about and learnt not to, because too painful. But could he really do it now? Could he really do that to _her_? He wasn’t new to having done horrible things to her, but this? It felt like cheating, like betraying and he was coming to realise it just now, now that he had already lost so much about her. He knew he owned her this, at least he had to preserve her memory.   
So he went back to the Library, retrieved her diary and screwdriver. He will read her diary one day, he will start by reading his first and then one day he will read hers too. For now he reverently put his wife’s last simulacrums on his bedside table, as a reminder that there’s nothing one can do for who leaves you, but to remember them and most of all remember how they changed you.    
 He will keep it in mind. Cross his hearts. He put the stabilisers on while flying to his next adventure. 

 


	2. Atra Nox

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Doctor answers the mysterious call and meets two girls from his future who keep reminding someone from his past. In the dark abandoned rooms of the first human colony on Mars the Doctor faces the twisted truth of some of his wife's words.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So... Here's the second chapter, from now on the chapters will be centred on the adventures the Doctor will experience with the two girls. Please let me know if you like it, reviews are really important to me. Hope you enjoy it. :)  
> In latin "Atra Nox" means dark night. The parts in italics are memories.

When he reached the time and location specified by the message, he found himself in a room, with no windows and a lonely door. In the middle there was a big table with red chairs, judging by the furniture and its style it was a human conference hall from the 23rd century. The only sound that echoed through the room was the one of his own feet. It was weird. He thought there would be someone waiting for him, whatever with good or bad intentions. Instead he was met only by a piercing silence and the odd feeling that something was definitely off. Just then the door opened and two girls stepped in. It was a joke, wasn't it? It had to be so, because not only his very dead wife had been brought back to the surface of his mind, but the girls who were now approaching him looked just like _her_. They had curly hair, one was blonde and the other a shocking red haired. They were about twenty years old, maybe something more or maybe less, humans judging by their appearance. Yes, it was definitely going to be a long day. It was disturbing the way they seemed so amused by what he expected was one of those epic frown only this regeneration could perform. He decided an aggressive tactic would probably  win their confident behaviour. 

“Who are you? And what the hell am I doing here?”

“Nice to see you too.” The ginger girl answered the old man’s growl with the right amount of cheerfulness to make him visibly flinch from anger.

“What do you mean? You don't know us?” Asked the blonde one, much more calmly than her accomplice had.

“How many meanings are there? I don't have the faintest idea of who you are.” He said looking between the two of them. He surely would have remembered them. 

“This is going to be a challenge, him not cooperative at all. It’s gonna be exciting.” 

“Cut it off, Mia.” The blonde girl reproached the red one, whose name was apparently Mia.

“We have a problem, Doctor, and that’s why we called you here. Going to help us or not?”  The blonde girl said not unkindly, but firmly at the same time. He stared at her, both of them, they looked familiar and when she spoke he immediately felt like he had to shut up. They seemed comfortable around him, that meant this was not gonna be the last time he would see them, so it would be better get going with this and let them grow on him. 

“Would like to know who I’m helping before actually doing it and most of all I’d like to know what my help is required for?”

“My name is Mia and this one is Gallie. We are students at Luna University, but from time to time we like to do some research on our on, verify that what we study is actually true and sometimes we like to fill those gap history left behind.” The ginger girl smirked at him. 

“And  how would you do that?” He asked raising an eyebrow. “Vortex Manipulator.” Mia winked at him, showing him her own. _Perfect_ , they were time travellers too, he knew well where it got him the last time, but this time he wouldn’t get attached, no he was not going to be part of these two’s life. That time when he let himself grow fond of the people he met or travelled with him was over. For him companionship died with those night stars on Darillium. 

“Now that we got that over, I think we can concentrate on the reason why you’re here.” The blonde girl said extracting what looked like a scanner. “The first colony on Mars was established exactly two years ago. People have taken up residence on it. But a month ago all communications were cut off. After that a distress call was made and then nothing anymore, absolute silence.” The blonde girl finished explaining. "What did the message say?” The Doctor enquired taking the scanner from the girl to examine it himself. "We don't know, we couldn't read it, but it was definitely an SOS.” Gallie stared at him intently. 

“So, you’ve basically summoned me because you can't read an SOS? Can't a rescue team or something go there and find out for themselves?” 

“That’s the point, Doctor. The SOS message came from the rescue team.” Mia stated. 

“Can I see the message?” 

“Yes, but the computer can’t read it, it's like it doesn’t recognise it. It’s probably been done with a different kind of software that the programme can’t read.” Gallie said showing him the computer. “Do you think you can read it?” She asked looking at his hand. He followed her gaze and discovered she had her eyes fixed on his screwdriver, he suspected she already knew the answer after all.

“Yes, I think so.” He said pointing the screwdriver at the computer. She was right, the message definitely came from a different software, a more advanced one than that of the computer. From the readings it looked like something from the 51st century. Odd, why would a rescue team from the 23rd century have technologies from the future? He didn’t have time to ponder why any longer, the sonic had done his deed and the SOS message could be seen.

“Done.” The Doctor exclaimed looking between the two girls. “Shall we see it?” They both nodded. Nothing would have prepared him for what he saw next. The century should have been a clue, better, a warning. Because it was _her_ century, the century in which she had been born, the century in which she had been at University first as a student and then as a professor. Why was everything about her now? He had easily run away from her memory and now it seemed like everything was connected to his wife. Now he understood why he had tried to forget her. It was so much easier that way, but the evidence of her existence begged for his attention. The monitor sprang up to life with the image of her face. It had been decades, but he still could tell what was on her mind, just by that dimmed light in her eyes or that fake smile that after years of marriage could not fool him anymore. She was worried, properly scared maybe, but it was when she started speaking that he understood she was in trouble, in serious and not-at-all-exciting danger. _"Doctor"_ She had uttered his name like a prayer. Her voice was trembling and her eyes glistering. Anger started bubbling up in him. His wife was a difficult one to frighten off, more like the other way around. He didn't know what they had done to her to make her crumble down like this, but he was sure of one thing: if he ever came across them he would tear them apart.

_"Doctor, please come as soon as possible. They are coming for me. I don't have much time now. All the others are dead. Please…”_

And just as abruptly as it had flickered on, the monitor went black. He froze, he stood there literally paralysed, blank as the silent screen. She was right there, so very near, but so very far, she belonged to a distant past, _his_ past, made of picnics on Asgards and nights on Darrilium. It ended for him and it ended for the version of her who was stuck in a computer database, but they were both his wife in every way, the dead data strings and the vibrant alive one he had just seen. He wanted to run right to her, save her, reassure her, but her inability to recognise this regeneration on that human snowy colony had created an insurmountable wall between her past and him. She had created a fixed point, she couldn’t meet this version of him before the madness of Hydroflax because she never had. However there was a version of his wife, alone and afraid on a martian wrecked colony. He truly didn't give a damn, he would have worn a perceptive filter or wipe her memory off, but he was certainly coming for her. 

“It was Professor Song. But it can’t be…”

“It surely was her…”

He turned his head to stare at the two girls, who looked equally shocked and confused. “You two know River?”

They looked at each other deciding what would be best to say, but not coming to anything good they compromised on the usual “She’s our professor at University.” They said as one. 

“Your professor?” His eyes burning with rage.

“Yes.” The blonde girl answered confused by his angry stare.“Why?”

“So, you are trying to make me believe that you didn’t know _she_ was part of the expedition? That it’s all a coincidence? Why did you call me here? I warn you, if you are using my wife as a leverage on me, not even the Universe itself could help you.” He had that dangerous tone of a man too tired of living by the rules anymore. If these two girls thought they could use River to get something from him, they were surely mistaken. “Calm the hell down and don’t you dare speak to Gallie like that.” The ginger girl growled back at him, with equal fury. Gallie stepped between them and grabbed the other girl’s arm. The Doctor backed away and regain his composure and calm. 

“We don’t want anything from you and you can’t even imagine how sorry we are she is in that situation. We didn’t know, otherwise we wouldn’t have called you, we know how you get when your wife is concerned.”

“I- I’m sorry.” How could he explain to two perfect strangers that since their message, the ache for his wife’s absence had gripped him again, making even the mere action of breathing painful? 

“It’s okay but I think it would be better going, we have a distressed professor to save.” Gallie grabbed his arm and Mia followed right behind.

 

 

 

They had eventually gone to the colony, to the place where River’s message came from. He hadn’t realised they were not just in a common conference hall, but in one of the Pentagon’s one. Useless to say they quickly drew the attention of many guns. Thanks god they had Vortex manipulators. So one moment they had pistols pointed at them and the next they were in an eerily dark room on Mars. He was starting to prefer easy triggered americans. The colony was plunged in darkness, complete and absolute pitch blackness. Not even the torch the girls had with them seemed capable of cutting through it. There was no sign of the people of the colony, it seemed like they had disappeared, but they started to suspect it had been worse than that. There was an inexplicable quantity of dust on the floor, well, it had been inexplicable until Mia had decided to scan it and it had turned out it wasn’t dust, more of ashes, human ashes. That’s what happened to the first martian settlers, reduced to nothing by something that was probably going to get to his wife, if it already hadn’t. But she didn’t die here. No, she died on a chair in the recesses of an abandoned planet called the Library. So she would survive this. Whatever _this_ was. But he was concerned anyway, because he didn’t give a heck if he knew she would survive this, what he wanted was his wife safe and confident, not hurt and possibly scared to death. He decided to scan their surroundings again, but not even this time the screwdriver had been capable of picking up any useful information. By this point he was so desperate he didn’t care if what had slaughtered a whole colony would run straight to him. It had been centuries since he had heard her voice or seen her eyes and now that he had been given the possibility to meet her again, it was only because she was threatened by a ghastly creature or whatever that buggering thing was. Nothing could hold him, he screamed his wife’s name, but like he expected nothing came back.

 

“Are you stupid or something? Yelling like that with a mass murderer creature probably still around?” Mia looked positively crossed and he didn’t blame her, he had done something stupid. “We’ve been groping around in the complete darkness without getting a single clue of where my wife is.” The Doctor growled back. The ginger girl quietened at that, she knew that Professor Song's presence was affecting him, maybe even worse than it had them, but this was not the time for being a sentimental idiot. “I know Doctor, but getting us killed is not gonna help her. We need to stay focus.” Mia said firmly, but her eyes had gone immediately soft and he couldn’t understand why. 

“Maybe we are gonna get more information in the control room. By my readings we are in the central building, just above the main entrance. The control room looks three corridors next to where we are.” Gallie had been silent all the time, studying the datas her scanner had been giving her the whole time. So they had followed her. There they found two bodies, probably they had been part of River’s team, but there weren’t any traces of River. By that point Mia had decided to take her gun. He hadn’t noticed it and it certainly had surprised him, but in the situation they were in it was not the time to go all peace-loving. The girls were busy working out he meaning of their scanners’ readings when it happened. It was a moment a word, but he had definitely heard her voice, two rooms far away give or take, but it was her, calling for him. “River, I’m coming. Keep talking.” But the only thing that answered him back was once again silence. 

“What the hell is happening?” Mia exclaimed irritate. “What does your scan say?”

“There are biological traces, but it’s wrong. It says that _she_ is here.” Gallie said looking around her. The Doctor franticly started looking for her, even if the darkness was unnaturally thick and the light illuminated too little, he was sure, she wasn’t there. 

"Someone is trying to trick us..." Mia pointed out. "I have a bad sensation, I think we better go."

"I'm not leaving without knowing River is safe." The Doctor looked at them sternly.

"My first priority is your safety." Mia snapped at him. "My safety? What is that supposed to mean? I'm thousands years old, I certainly don't need your protection." He hissed back. "Oh, you have no idea how wrong you are, you..." Mia yelled at him. 

"I think you should postpone your bickering..." Gallie said, without being listened to. 

"It was a mistake to come here, to answer your message, I should have stayed far away from you.”

"Oh, yes, because sulking about your dead wife was better..." Mia immediately regretted saying it. “You have no idea of what you’re talking about.” He fixed her with such a strict and pained stare that she didn’t know what to say, how to apologise. 

Gallie gasped loudly and both the Doctor and Mia shut up, turning their attention to the blonde girl. “It’s here…” She whispered.

“The creature?” Mia asked confused, not seeing anything because of the complete darkness. “Yes.” Gallie answered. “I suggest you activate the red mode on your blazer, it’s definitely _not_ gonna be a tiny one. It’s a Noxten.” Gallie said, while Mia positioned herself in front of her and the Doctor ready to fire. “You know that creatures?” The Doctor asked confused, helding his screwdriver like it was a weapon, but not really knowing what he was gonna do with that. “Yep, we ran into them once and we were okay not getting to know them better a second time. Nasty creatures.” Mia said with a grimace that made her look like a five-year-old girl.

Nothing happened for several minutes and then all hell broke loose. The creature was a Noxten, a savage predator of the Black Eye Galaxy, whose race fed on neurons' electrical impulses and was notorious for literally turning into ashes whole planets. It dazed its victims off by creating a painful interference in the central nervous system and after that he proceeded by absorbing neurons' electricity, leaving deadly burns. They then completely incinerated the bodies, as a sign of utter annihilation. But how had a Noxten happened to find itself on the first human colony on Mars? 

As soon as the thing had started running toward them, Mia had responded by shooting and yelling, it was still pitch black and the commotion was becoming more and more chaotic each passing minute, the Noxton was fast and completely camouflaged by darkness. Gallie was fiddling with a device he suspected was aimed to stun the creature, while he was standing there, for the first time in ages not knowing what to do. Until it happened, he felt a sharp pain in the middle of his chest and the floor seemed to hit his knees first and then his back. Maybe it was more like the opposite, he had hit the floor. The noise and the mess continued for a minute or two, when everything became silent. It didn’t take long to have Gallie hovering over him, looking at him sick with worry and Mia lowering next to him, wearing the same horrified expression. He had judged them wrongly after all, they looked really concerned about him.  "What the hell happened to him?" He heard Mia yell. "I don't know, I'm trying to find out."

“I’m not gonna be wiped off history, because of this moron." Mia hissed. “You understand?” She said speaking to the Doctor who had half dazed off. 

"Me neither..." Gallie grunted.

His last thought went to River, he hadn’t found her yet and he probably wouldn’t, now everything she had said on that ship about him not coming to her when in danger made sense and it hurt.  He closed his eyes and could here nothing more. 

 

_"River!"_

_"I told you, I was buying time."_

_"Seemed pretty convincing for a farce." She sighed, of course she sighed, bloody maddening woman. "River, when was the last time you saw me?” She averted her eyes from him and he understood. "Such a shitty husband I am, don’t you think?”_

_"Doctor, it's okay, we both needed time to grieve and we've never been good at doing it together." They stayed in silence for what felt like hours until he found the courage to ask her what he dreaded most. "What you said on the ship, about me not being with you when in trouble, has it happened?"_

_She shrugged._

_"River, for god sake, I'm trying to talk about this. We're gonna spend twenty-four years together, it would be good to start talking to each other since the beginning."_

_"There's no point in talking about the past, what is done is done, there's no remedy."_

_"Were you hurt?"_

_"You know me, the worst I get are a few scratches, in the end I was as good as new." She said plastering that fake smile of hers. "Besides, I wasn't alone. I had my girls to help."_

_He raised an eyebrow. "Your girls?"_

_"Yes." She gently beamed at him, her eyes boring into his with such intensity he could only shut up and stare back at her with that adoration this body seemed impossible to contain around her._

 

He woke up to the sound of a steady double beep and a small hand wrapped around his own. He tried to open his eyes but the sudden brightness blinded him, so he shut them closed again. When he was able to adjust to light again, he found soft green blue eyes staring at him. _The blonde gentle girl,_ _Gallie_. He felt something heavy on his other palm and ginger curls spread on his chest. _The mad ginger,_ _Mia_.

Gallie shook Mia awake, getting an annoyed grunt from the sleeping girl, but when she opened her eyes and saw the Doctor she beamed. "You're up Old Man!" Mia said cheerfully. 

“Where am I? You didn't take me to the hospital, did you?" He said jolting up, but then he felt the reassuring hum of the TARDIS. The medical bay, that's where he was, good, no hospital. 

“Don’t worry, we know how possessive you are of your DNA.” Gallie reassured him. 

“How did we get on the TARDIS? How did you get _me_ in the TARDIS?” He was eyeing them curiously, more than a bit surprised and impressed. “I’m still asking myself that too. You look flesh and bones, but boy, you really weigh a lot. We had to drag you here and it wasn’t easy, not one bit.” Mia gave a dramatic gesture, just to underline the merit of their actions. He chuckled at that. He relaxed just to be overwhelmed by the thought of his wife. _River_. Was she fine? Had she escaped the Noxten?

“Professor Song… Is she all right?” He had those wide worried eyes the girls had seen so many times before. “She’s fine Doctor, we rescued her and we took you both to the TARDIS.” Mia answered squeezing his hand. “Was she hurt?” The Doctor feared the answer he definitely expected but hoped wasn’t the truth. “She- ” Gallie shifted her gaze to her fidgeting hands. “She was unconscious when we found her, took her to the TARDIS and left her to the Sisters of the Infinite Schism. They said she was going to be all right.” She finally said looking at the Doctor. 

So that was it, he had come to save her when she had called him, but she would never know. She would always think he had just left her, ignored her, just like she said. He remembered their conversation about it, a few scratches she had said. A Noxten wasn’t a creature to leave just some harmless scratches. Again he had been unable to protect her, she would answer she had never asked for it, but that was the point, this time she had asked for his help. “What had it done to her?” He had that self loathing expression she hated so much. “Doctor…” Gallie sighed closing her eyes. “She’s safe now and soon she will be as good as new.” Mia stepped in. “You should rest, that thing almost got you regenerating.” Gallie said, pecking him on the cheek, ready to move out of the room. “Could you two stay here?” He found himself asking what he had never asked anyone before. He had never showed himself weak and they were still strangers, but there was something about them, something he couldn’t quite put his finger on. He had to admit it, he liked them. They reminded him of River and somehow of _home_. Clever and brave, they had revealed themselves to be something special and fascinating. And they were from his future, more adventures to come and better ways to get to know each other. Hopefully it would have been a new begging without the threat of a bitter ending. 

“Of course.” Gallie smiled softly.

“What was a Noxten even doing on Mars by the way?” The Doctor asked looking between the two of them. Mia grinned childishly at him. “Oh, as soon as you’re out of bed, that’s definitely something we are gonna found out, Old Man.” The future seemed to be holding some good surprises after all. 

 


	3. Callisto - part I

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm sorry for the delete in updating, but first I was sick and then studying and homeworks got in the way.   
> I gladly accepted ChiefDoctor's wonderful idea, hope I did it honour.   
> This chapter is divided in two, the second part won't be late, I promise. ;) So... Here it is, as always I hope you like it and if you do make me know, I'd love to here about what you think about it. :)

  
Callisto. A planet 16 billions years light away from Earth. He was sitting in a cafe, a pink light, filtered by the tree leaves of the same colour, was illuminating his face. He had her diary with him. He had read one of her adventures, one without him. She had been on this planet and apparently had started a revolution against the tyranny which suppressed the people of this part of the planet. They had even built a statue in her honour, it was located in the middle of the capital city and he was currently staring at it. Nothing to say, it was well done, but it could never even come close to River. It had her appearance, yes, but its static nature was ridiculous compared to his wife’s wild soul. And if the artist had seen her leading the revolt he would have surely done something to that pensive and grave stare, so far from those impish and reckless eyes of hers. Of course like the artist he hadn’t seen her battling for the liberty of a country she didn’t care about, just for the thrill of the whole ordeal. But unlikely the artist he could have imagined it, her. Oh, you bet he could, while reading her diary he had seen her right in front of him, even if only in his mind. Some things were starting to come back to him, like the way her skin seemed to glister and shine after a fight. He still couldn’t recall the sound of her voice in the morning or picture the exact shade of her eyes. It was maddening. Nevertheless her diary was not only helping him remembering some of those tiny details time had wiped off, but it was also allowing him to know her better. It was odd, he was discovering new aspects about his wife, his long-lost wife who had disappeared from his life centuries ago. It could happen just to them, really, because who would have fallen for their own wife even harder once she was dead? Well, probably anyone who had the luck or the misfortune to follow their loved ones’ traces through out the Universe and History themselves. She would have laughed at him that smug grin of hers, because he hated archeologist and there he was, searching artefact and books about her. She had studied about him when she was young, it only seemed fair he studied about her now that he was old. He closed his eyes and for a moment he could hear it, the sound of her laugh. He was trying to picture her when a shade came between him and the sun. He slowly opened his eyes. Of course, it was them, the two girls from his future, Gallie and Mia. They looked at him amused, Mia keeping shifting her gaze from him to the statue of their professor. 

“Good afternoon, Old Man.” Mia exclaimed cheerfully. They both immediately grabbed two chairs and sat next to him, staring at River’s statue with a ridiculous grin.  
   
They had stayed with him until he had fully recovered and he had to admit he had enjoyed every minute of it. He had discovered more about them, like he now knew Mia loved bluegrass music. He had laughed when she had first played some songs on her banjo, but she had told him how she found comfort in it and how it made the aching for home bearable. While he had discovered Gallie was an inventor and that when she was little her house had her machines scattered everywhere. They both had been River's students, according to Mia, her best and favourite students; he didn't have any doubt they were, never met such brilliant pudding brains, if they really were humans. He liked them, they were clever and funny, but most of all they seemed to understand him, not once questioning his anger or his silence, but always trying to cheer him up.

“Does it look like Professor to you?” Mia asked to an amused Gallie. “There’s a resemblance, yes, but other than that? Nothing at all.” Gallie chuckled. “You’re right, my dear, and do you know why?” Mia asked. “My excellent Mia I don’t know, would you enlighten me?” Gallie answered playing her part. “Well, for instance our dear Professor is not the epitome of contemplation and second but most important the braggart pose does not represent her one bit.”  
“See? I was thinking the same.” The Doctor agreed, but Mia kept talking like he hadn’t spoken.  
“Showing off has always been the Doctor’s prerogative.” The ginger girl concluded. And there it was, he had been expecting the sardonic comment.  
“Look who’s talking.” The Doctor glared at her only to be answered by her arching eyebrow and crossed arms.  
He was coming to realise how similar she was to the both of them, he had his crossing arms habit and River’s way of raising her eyebrow. Those two girls fascinated him, because they were exactly the same way he had always imagined his children with River would look like. He had imagined them curly, wildly curly, like his beautiful wife had been. And god he had always imagined them clever, clever and brave, again, just like her. Yes, they would have looked and sounded like those two, a little bit Time Lord, beautifully Pond and most of all sublimely River. It was a thought, the one of having an offspring, that he had often entertained himself with when she was alive, but he had always kept it to himself, he had never shared it with her. It seemed a selfish and preposterous thought with the mess of their timelines and the awareness that any children of theirs would be doomed to be orphans. But it had actually happened two times, twice he had been on the very point of becoming a father again; the first time that hope had been erased before it even had the possibility to see the sun's light. The second time it had cruelly let him get used to fatherhood again, before it had been torn away from him. He had marvelled in the sight of his wife softened by motherhood, making her even more dazzling at his eyes. But now that was impossible, the idea of having a child with anyone but his wife was not appealing, not anymore. Maybe that was why he liked those girls that much, they gave him the possibility of imagining what it would have been like if that ten-year-old boy would have survived, if his boy wouldn't have left him behind, before he could have shown him the Universe. But it was of no use to think about it, not at all.

“Doctor are you alright?” Gallie asked worried.  
“You didn’t get upset, Old Man, did you?” Mia asked squeezing his hand.  
“Sorry girls, just zone out for a minute.” He had that sad smile they hated so much. “Right, so what’s the occasion? And most of all how did you know I was going to be here at this particular time?” He asked impressed.  
“Well, let’s just say you are predictable and we are clever.” Gallie winked at him.  
“So what do you think if we pop a bit earlier and see what our dear Professor had to deal with?” Mia clapped her hands in excitement, for being a remarkable girl sometimes she just looked like a five years old.  
“I-I can’t cross her time line, you know that…”  
“Whoever talked about crossing her timeline? I was thinking to jump little bit earlier, just to see what was it like in here before Professor Song came to mess around.” Mia explained. “Got any specific idea on the date?” The Doctor asked her. “Oh, I was afraid you’d never ask.” Mia smirked, the girls grabbing one of the Doctor’s arm each. “Come on. You’re driving, right?” Gallie smiled at him. “Always a bloody taxi I am.” He grumbled. “You hate it when you don’t get a say about where we’re going.” Gallie patted his arm. “Of course I do, I’ve always been the one doing the choosing, now it looks like I’m the companion.” They both chuckled and kissed him on both cheeks at the same time. He smiled softly at them.

 

Minutes later, but actually three hundreds years before, they found themselves in that same square, only there was no statue of his wife nor that cafe he had been sitting in a moment ago; only the trees kept staying where they were, with their pink leaves. The neat palaces had been replaced by crumbling buildings and the airy streets he had walked in at the begging of the morning were now narrow dark alleys.  
“Gloomy, isn’t it?” Gallie asked, looking around herself. “Quite.” The Doctor agreed. “Could one of you remind me the use of us being here?” He asked, frowning at the bleakness of the city that one day would be one of the wonders of this Galaxy. “We look arou-.” Mia was stopped mid sentence by a girl who had knocked her on the floor on her run. She flinched in pain, trying to get up. “Mia, are you alright?” The Doctor and Gallie asked her at the same time. “Yes, yes, I’m fine. Help the girl.” The girl who had crumbled to the floor like her tried to stand up and the Doctor helped her up. “Are you okay?” He asked. The girl had a frightened expression, her eyelashes glistening with tears. “Don’t be afraid, we are not gonna hurt you.” He extended his hand to reassure her. She must have been no more than ten years old, big violet eyes and skin a pale shade of blue, just like the rest of the population on this planet. “What’s your name?” He asked with a reassuring smile. She looked uncertain if to answer or not, but in the end she decided to trust him. “Aglafea.” “Aglafea. Lovely name. I’m the Doctor.” She stared at him and something must have clicked in her mind because she suddenly asked “are you my guardian?” “Guardian?” He asked confused, then he remembered what River had written on her diary, about the religious beliefs of this planet. Apparently people on Callisto believed that each of them were given a guardian, something of a human angel, that would protect them and in the end would judge them. “Right, guardian. It depends, do you want him to be me?” “You’re strange” she was studying him curiously. “but if you are going to help us, then yes, you’re okay.” She concluded with a big smile. “What do you need my help for, young lady?” Fear started to creep in her eyes once again. “I can’t talk about it in here, someone could hear me.” She whispered, eyeing the grey mass of passers-by. “Lead the way and we’ll help you.” He whispered with a soft smile, offering his hand, which she grabbed tightly. “But no more run, I think I've sprained my ankle.” Mia said, earning a concerned look from the Doctor. “I’m fine, let’s just move.” She waved him off and with the help of Gallie she started walking. 


	4. Callisto - part II

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here's the second part, this story ended up quite long. As always I hope you liked it. :)

They arrived at a small grey terraced house, looking just as much decrepit as the rest of the city. Aglafea hushed them in, looking at every direction in search of prying eyes, when found none she entered the building quickly closing the door behind her. Gallie helped Mia sit down on a chair, in front of which the Doctor immediately crouched to have a look at the ginger girl’s ankle. He lightly touched it, earning a furious stare from Mia. “Can you move it?” He asked with a frown. “Yes, but it hurts.” She answered. “Then you just sprained it.” “That much” She hissed. “I had already gathered on my own.” She batted his hand away from her ankle. “Right. Aglafea, have you got any bandages?” The Doctor asked the young girl. “I think so.” She went in search of the item. “And something cold too, please.” He shouted after her. Aglafea quickly left the room just to return with the items in her hands.

“Got it.” Aglafea said handing them to the Doctor, who started bandaging Mia’s ankle. She was wincing and he knew she was trying not to cry. “Doctor, if you keep tightening this damn thing, I’m gonna sprain all the bones you have in body.” She growled. “Oh, come on, and I thought you were a badass.” His voice was carrying a light tone, but she could see the apology written all over his faces, so she tried to convey through her eyes that it was okay. 

“I’m sorry I hurt your daughter, guardian.” Aglafea said looking down at her feet. 

He looked at both Mia and Gallie, trying to read any sign of what the word daughter might mean to them. “It’s not your fault.” Mia interjected. “And don’t worry, I’m gonna be on my feet sooner than he’d liked.”

Just then an older girl made her way in the room with a crying baby on her hip. She was around eighteen, with bright golden eyes and skin of that soft light blue, that belonged to this species. 

“Aglafea, what’s this noise, you’ve waken up the ba-” She stopped frozen on the spot, her eyes going wide. “Aglafea! What have you done?!” She cried out in horror.

“I know it looks bad, but hear me out Vlaly-”

“Bad? You’re gonna get us all killed!” 

“They’re here to help. Look,” she said grabbing the Doctor’s hand. “I’ve found my guardian.” 

“Oh, Aglafea, if anyone in the city finds out about Freddy we are dead, or worse he is.” The girl said pressing the baby tighter to her chest. 

The Doctor decided to intervene “Look, we don’t mean you any harm and we really want to help. I’m the Doctor, this is Gallie and the bashed one is Mia.” Mia grunted and he fixed her with a stare. 

“What’s the matter? What is it that is scaring you so much?” Gallie asked confused. 

"People on Callisto are allowed to only have two children." The Doctor answered, his eyes fixed on the small boy. "And you've got a little brother." 

The girl named Vlaly lowered her eyes. “They took our parents, so we ran away and hided here.” She looked at the Doctor straight in his eyes with determination. “But I’ll protect him till my last breath, if I have to.” 

“I don’t doubt it, but do you know what to do? Have you come up with something or are you just planning to hide in here?” The Doctor asked.

“We’re gonna take him to Anthea, there’s a family who will take him.” Vlaly answered promptly. “You seem to have sorted out everything. So what do you need our help for?” The Doctor asked gently putting a hand on Aglafea’s head and looking in her violet eyes. “The barrier. It’s not that easy to pass from this part of the planet to the other, there’s a wall between them and soldiers at the entrance.” 

“I’ve got a space ship. I could pop into the other part of the planet.”

“You’ve got a space ship?” She asked, her eyes wide. 

“Cool isn’t it?” The Doctor smiled smugly. 

“Tell me that you’ve not been tracked from it to here.” She sighed locking eyes with her sister’s, who vehemently shook her head no. “Okay listen, we can’t use any device that uses temporal manipulation or it could be detected. We can only rely on our feet and an escape route.” Vlaly concluded. “What escape rout?” Gallie asked. “It’s in one of the alleys that forks from the square, it’s an underground tunnel leading to Anthea.” 

“Wait a minute, what's Anthea?” Mia asked. “It’s the capital of the other half of the planet, to be exact the part with no tyranny, but a democratic government.” The Doctor explained. “Look, who's done his homework” Mia smirked. He smiled and then continued talking, addressing this time to Vlaly  “But you’ll never get there without being noticed. There are cameras on every side of the street, they probably have already seen us.”   “Then what are we gonna do?” Mia asked. “Distract them.” The Doctor answered. “I’ll start the TARDIS’ engine and get the guards’ attention, you two will protect Freddy and his sisters.” He explained to Mia and Gallie. “You are forgetting that I’m no use if we need to run. It’d be better if I take the TARDIS and you protect them.” Mia said. “Not to mention that with _your_ driving skills you could end up picking us when Freddy is twenty.” She added with a smirk. “And you would happen to know how to drive _my_ ship?” The Doctor asked. “Better than you do, Old Man.” She winked. He was shocked, surely she would have mattered quite a lot to him in the future if he had taught her to drive the TARDIS. It was just like River, all over again, only this time he had two mysteries to unravel. There was a thought at the back of his mind. A thought that never seemed to get to the surface. A thought that he suspected would break him, if he let it merge. "So Old Man?" Mia asked tapping her foot impatiently. “Okay, okay, deal.” The Doctor gave in. 

 

When everything was set The Doctor found himself alone in the cold kitchen, fiddling with the set of his screwdriver, just to occupy time. He had the basket, in which the baby boy was laying, next to him. It had probably been unwise to fiddle with the sonic, producing a noise surely Freddy had not appreciate for he had started to fuss. He panicked not knowing what to do, afraid of picking him up. He neared the cot in which Freddy was kicking. Upon seeing him the boy extended his arms demanding to be picked up. The Doctor complied reluctantly and started to bounce him.

“Hello.”

He babbled.

"You'll have to forgive me if I don't do it right, but it's been a while for me."

"You're very kind. I will do everything I can to protect you."

"Well, I like you too."

"No, I'm not sad."

The baby gurgled.

"You remind me of someone I once knew, that's all."

"Yes, a boy just like you, well not really like you, let's say more pinkish."

"Oh yes, he was amazing too, such a beautiful baby boy."

"Yes, he liked lullabies and stories too, his mum’s adventures were what he enjoined the most.”

“Yes, he was. But he didn't resemble me, looked more like his mum."

"Oh she was, she was beautiful."

"Oh, I bet your mum is beautiful too."

Gallie entered the room to see the Doctor cradling the baby, she smiled softly at that, it had been a long time since he had seen him with a baby. “Doctor, everything is ready.” 

“Oh, of course.” He then talked to Freddy. “It’s been a pleasure to speak with you.” 

Gallie raised an eyebrow. “Let me guess, you speak baby.” “Of course I do.” He positioned the baby back into his cot. “Now I think it would be better moving.” 

 

Everything went as planned. Mia distracted the soldiers lurking in the streets and the Doctor, Gallie and the siblings had made it to the tunnels beneath the city. They had an unfortunate encounter with a bunch of soldiers, who had followed them, but Gallie had been able to knock them out. They had made it. The siblings were safe in their newly found family.  Only it didn't really go like this, no, not at all. The soldiers had been following them since the exact moment they entered the tunnels. They had been running as fast as they could, until theyfound a door separating them from Anthea, from salvation. 

"It's blocked." Gallie cried out frantically, slamming her hands on it. The Doctor pointed his screwdriver at the door, which painfully slowly began to deactivate its complicate lock.  "Come on, come on." The Doctor shouted at the door. They could hear the soldiers getting closer. "Doctor what is it?" Vlaly asked clinging to her sister and little brother. "It will need time, time that we ain't got." Gallie exclaimed frantically. "I know, but I can't do much more right now." He said looking at Gallie, who was searching for something in her bag. He turned to the siblings, smiling reassuringly, having seen the terrified look in their eyes. "I'm going to walk just around that corner. I'll talk to those soldiers, just to buy some time, while the door opens." He said with a wink. "Or you could just ask them to shoot you right in the face." Gallie hissed, glaring at him. "Have you got something better?" He said crossing his arms.  "Actually I do." Gallie said triumphantly. "I'm gonna use this to knock them out. It's an invention of mine. They take a nice nap, while we leg it." She winked, showing him the device. "Have I already told you how brilliant you are?" He grinned and kissed her forehead.  "Yes, but I'm sure you wanna keep doing so." She said, with that sweet smile of hers, that made her so different from Mia.  "Ok, let's move, I'm gonna go and activate the device and you stay put here." She said.  "No, you're not. I'm not gonna let you walk at gunpoint of some angry soldiers."  "I'm gonna be fine and besides you don't know how to activate it." He stared at her debating on what to do, he couldn’t risk her safety, but she was also the only one to know how to do it. “Fine, fine, but I'm coming with you.” She rolled her eyes and went to the point that would better fit for the effects of the device.

“Gallie, are you done? The soldiers are coming.” The Doctor said anxiously. 

“Almost there.”

"Gallie..." 

"Done." 

They ran behind the corner, where the three siblings were already waiting for them. The Doctor took the boy in his arms, while Vlaly positioned herself in front of Aglafea, trying to protect her the best she could. They waited for the soldiers to come and as soon as they did Gallie activated the device at the right time so to knock them all out. The Doctor peaked around the corner, trying to see if everyone was really unconscious, one hand laying protectively on the baby's head, shielding him from any possible attack. That's exactly when it happened, a soldier fired a shot, its dull sound roaring through the tunnel whole. The noise had shocked them all, sending Gallie in motion toward the responsible to disarm him, sending him unconscious with a kick in the face. Just then, when silence had returned in the tunnel and the shot's echoes had lost themselves in the air, a dull thud took its place. The Doctor turned to see Vlaly on the ground clutching her stomach tightly, a blue liquid sipping through her fingers, blood, her blood. The Doctor passed Freddy to Aglafea and immediately sat on his knees, frantically scanning her with his screwdriver. “Gallie, come here immediately.” He shouted. “We need to move her, now. We need to take her to the TARDIS. How long for the door to open?” The Doctor extracted a handkerchief and pressed it to the wound. Gallie just stood there in shock and a far look in her eyes. “GALLIE!” The Doctor shouted, waking the blonde girl from her trance state. “Yes, what- what do I need to do?” 

“Check the door.” 

“Doctor stop.” Vlaly whispered. “Don’t worry Vlaly, we are gonna take you out of here, you are gonna be fine.” He reassured her, but by now she was fighting to merely stay awake. 

“Keep them safe Doctor, take Aglafea and Freddy to their new family." She whispered, wincing in pain. "No, no, come on Vlaly, don’t give up. Not now, not like this. We have made it, the door is opening." He said desperately. 

"Aglafea, be a good girl and look after your brother.” Vlaly smiled at her sister and brother. And then there was nothing, no ragged breath, no Vlaly, nothing, just silence and the sound of Aglafea's sobs. The door opened but only four of them crossed it. 

 

He eventually returned to Callisto, a few days for him, but exactly eighty years after crumbling dark alleys and children with skin the colour of the light blue sky. He returned to that square with pink trees and pastel light. Eighty years and River’s statue was already in place. He hadn’t noticed before but his wife’s representation had a flower in her hand, the name Vlaly encored in it. 

“Doctor, isn’t it?” An old man approached him, his eyes reminded him of something, sweet words and baby’s babbling maybe, or maybe not. 

“Do I know you?” The Doctor asked gazing into the old man’s yellow eyes.

“It’s been a while, don’t know if it has been for you too. My sister told me you are something of an ageless god with time at your command.” He paused then looked at River’s statue, nodding toward it. “She was amazing,wild and free; the sculptor didn’t get her nature right at all. But I guess you already know that.” The Doctor looked at him gaping, _this men had met his wife?_ The old man chuckled. “I had the pleasure to meet her. Fight at her side and it was something unbelievable, but what I will never forget is how well she told stories. Oh, I loved those stories about centurions, blue boxes and girls out of fairytales. They seemed dreams, something made out of stars and time itself. I was just a boy then and she kept an eye on me. Now I know for sure I owe her my life. But she is not the only one I owe my life to, after all I was saved by the old man travelling the Universe in a box first. I was saved by the lovers ancient stories and songs talk about.” He smiled looking at the Doctor, who had a frown on his face. 

“You’re not-” _Freddy_ , the boy with golden eyes, who liked ancient lullabies and impossible stories, the baby who had reminded him so much of his own boy. 

“I’m afraid I am, but after all it’s been eighty years. You might find me sightly changed.”

“Freddy.” The Doctor gasped surprised.

“Doctor.” Freddy smiled. 

 

 


	5. Katabasis - part I

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the delate, again. In this chapter the Doctor really starts asking himself some questions about the two girls' origins and they might let something slip. It will be divided in at leat two parts because it got reeeaaally long.  
> The title is a greek word that means trip to the underworld and somehow in the story it will be, but that will come up more in the second part.  
> I'm gonna go on holiday so the next chapter will be posted in a week, but don't worry it's ready. As always I hope you enjoy it and any comment are gladly welcomed. :)

“We could go to Comelius, it's a little bit humid and it mostly has swamps and forests, but there is a small meadow with flowers that at night resemble stars.” The Doctor suggested tapping his fingers on the TARDIS console. 

He had picked them up at Luna University, after they had finished lessons. He was starting to wonder what they could possibly learn in there, they seemed to know more than any professor could teach them. 

“What about Atatrox? I read the coronation of Magniter MLVI was quite remarkable.” Of course Mia would suggest something pompous and crowded as that, she had a thing for chaotic adventures. 

“What about that planet… how was it called? The one with the levitating city, with two moons, one huge, the other small. The one where we met that girl you had a crush on.” Gallie clasped her hands together, looking expectingly at the other girl. 

“Oh, I know it, give me a mo. I have it. I swear.” Mia squeezed her eyes in concentration, bouncing and grinning like a child. The Doctor was watching them, amused at their little display he had gotten accustomed to by now. It had happened many times before, they seemed to just zone out and for a moment they were in their own world, made of adventures only them could know of, places they had been to together and that had created those memories they now were sharing. “Laskarius VI!” They cried out at the same time, laughing. 

“Doctor have you been on Laskarius VI?” They both asked.

“Yes, yes I think so, I’ve been there with that girl… Clara.” _Clara_ , the girl who can never merge from the depths of his mind, even though he was sure she had meant the universe to him, quite literally. 

“Oh.” The girls lowered their eyes, it was like they felt guilty to have mentioned her. 

“We could go somewhere else, Old Man. The place doesn’t really matter.” He felt Mia’s hand on his arm and somehow it gave him comfort. 

“What matters is we go there together and of course it shall be amazing.” Gallie was looking at him with that soft smile which always managed to reassure him. They were so different but at the same time so alike in their ability to make him instantly feel better. 

“Yes, always amazing.” He smiled at both of them. Mia hadn’t the time to suggest another bizarre planet of hers that they were bolted forward, a noise of distress coming from the TARDIS, the lights going dim. Then as suddenly as they had been thrown on the floor the ship came to an alt with a thud. 

“Wha- what’s happening?” The Doctor examined the ship as he sat straight, the floor was cold beneath his hands and the console room was alarmingly dim, if not for the flashing red lights. His own concern mixing with his ship’s at the back of his mind, _she_ was alarmed, more than damaged.“Is everybody all right?” He looked around trying to spot the girls. He saw Mia, rubbing at her forehead just to wince even more. “What the heck just happened?” Well, at least Mia and her _delicate_ choice of words were all right. He stood up, he couldn't see Gallie. 

"Doctor-" The concern in Mia's voice made him stop in his tracks. The TARDIS was pretty much screaming by now, urging him forward to where Gallie laid unconscious. He shook her, only to receive no answer. He took her pulse, steady, dear gods. Breathing, she was breathing too, good very good. He took his screwdriver and scanned her. No damages, just a commotion. She opened her eyes and he released a breath he didn't know he was holding, his ship calming in the back of his mind. "Oi oi, my head." She was trying to sit, Mia supporting her. He closed his eyes in relief, those two would be the death of him if they kept scaring him like that. "Look at my finger." He was waving his finger in front of her blue-green eyes. She grabbed it in her small hand tightly, squeezing her eyes shut. It was a simple gesture, really, no big deal, but it unsettled him. It made something come to the surface, a kind of aching, of longing that had been buried in the recesses of his mind since he had gotten to know them. That simple gesture that hided so much more: that was the gesture he had once shared with his children, those tiny fingers wrapping around one of his own. That simple gesture that carried the tangible promise of a brand new life, was now imposing itself in all its strength. It was then that it hit him, leaving him lost and confused. There was _this_ thought, dream maybe, that a part of _her_ would live in someone else, that the resemblance between the girls and his wife wasn't just the reflection of his need, no, he was starting to realise that not only he wanted them to be _River’s_ , but _his_ too. 

"How's your head?" Mia's voice made him snap out of his thoughts. "It hurts, but rather than that it's okay." Gallie opened her eyes and he found himself staring at them. “Doctor? Are you okay?” She had that little furrow that kept popping up whenever she was concentrated or worried, right now probably the latter. “Yes, yes-” He cleared his voice. “Something happened to the TARDIS I think.” He was distracted by the way her eyes were searching the TARDIS, like she could hear his ship. _Could she?_ “Is the Old Girl all right? She was screaming before…” 

“Wha- Screaming?” 

“I think we should check where we are, the scanner is completely blank.” Mia said, he hadn’t seen her stand up, but apparently she had and now she was staring confused at the screen. “Does it say anything?” The Doctor mumbled still staring at Gallie. “Doesn’t seem so.” Mia sprinted toward the doors, opening them wide. "Doctor... You'd better come here."

He helped Gallie on her feet, checking her out one last time. 

A dark alley, probably of a space ship. Broken down or at least breaking down, the lights were out and some cables were hanging too. There were metallic noises, a hollow rumble, that only suggested structural failures. He didn’t like it, this ship could be on the very point of crumbling beneath their feet. “Girls, I don’t like this place.” The two of them had stepped out of the TARDIS in the dark alley. “In, both of you.” They didn’t get the _don’t-wander-off-thing_ at all, nor the obeying part, must be hell being father to these two, would it? 

He turned his back to the dark alley, striding toward the console to check again if they could get out of this place. It was strange, he didn’t hear any background sound, only the soothing hum of the TARDIS at the back of his mind. It was almost if- _bugger_ , the old girl had apparently shut down her power engines. “Why have you done that?” _Did it have to do with the bolt of before?_ The TARDIS hummed in protest. “Yes, of course, I know you didn’t do it on purpose, only it would help knowing why you shut the engines…” 

“Doctor, what’s going on?” Gallie was coming back inside with Mia in tow.

“She shut the engines down and I don’t know why.” They were standing a few feet away from him, their eyes searching the air for an answer. 

“Maybe she did it to protect herself…” 

“From what exactly?” He was confused, of course he was, his ship had just shut down, but what confused him even more was how they could possibly know the TARDIS felt in danger.

“I-I don’t know, but staying in the TARDIS is quite useless anyway.” 

 

 

The ship was in the worst conditions one could ever think of, the walls were torn, pipes and cables that were once hidden formed a miserable jungle above their heads. At times there were noises, probably the ship howling, not able to sustain its structure anymore. Or maybe it wasn’t just the ship surrendering to its collapse. There was an acrid smell, like something chemical that he couldn’t really identify. The ship was probably a relict, emptied by pirates; they had probably taken what was valuable and left the rest to rot. But there was more, the apparent emptiness of this place and the magnetic field that had sucked in the TARDIS were still somewhat unexplainable. He slowed down so to be nearer to the girls, Gallie was still clearly not well, but with the TARDIS’ defence down he preferred to have her by his side. 

“Girls, stay close to me, we don’t know what’s gonna come out.” He whispered afraid that in that darkness something could stir, awaken by his voice. 

A metallic noise, this time closer and more like a railing being hit by a bar. He instinctively grabbed the girls’ hand.

“What was that?” Mia’s fingers immediately reaching for the gun she had at her waist. 

“Didn’t sound like the ship breaking down.” Gallie looked right into the Doctor’s eyes, her excitement mirrored in his worry. “I don’t like this place, we find the control room and then we go back to the TARDIS, no wandering off.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it.” Mia and her impish smirks will seal his madness.

“I think we’re almost there.” Gallie nodded towards the dirty sign saying control room, but immediately regretting it, her head hurting. He stopped and scanned her with the sonic trying to determine if she had worsen, the last thing he needed was a major damage to her brain. She had her eyes shut and was visibly in pain. He gently took her face in his hands. “What do you feel?” She opened her eyes, all the mirth from before gone. “Pain.” “Do you want me to carry you?” “No, it’s ok-” He picked her up, adjusting her weight, god, she was heavy for being so small. “You sure you’re not gonna drop her?” Mia raised an eyebrow. “Yes, I think I can manage.” He glared at her and he would have kept doing so if a metallic noise didn’t get extremely close. The three of them all turned and from the pitch darkness of the alley they saw a _thing_ coming. A _thing_ , yes, hard to really tell what it was, it seemed a humanoid, but definitely wasn’t human. At first it didn’t see them, but then he started running and it was fast, _really_ fast. “Doctor?” He tightened his hold around Gallie and with Mia at his side started to run. Gallie whined in his arms, the bouncing of the run not really helping her head, but that thing chasing them would have probably bitten her head off. They arrived at the control room entrance and as soon as they entered it, Mia tried to close it, hacking in the door’s system. The Doctor still had Gallie in her arms and the sonic in his hand. “Use the sonic!” Mia grabbed it at the doors finally started closing, just as the creature appeared. 

It couldn’t get in anymore, but they could have a good look at the thing. It was human, but at the same time it wasn’t, better it had probably been human. The skin was crumbling and it was of a sick reddish colour, the eyes were blood shot and the nose almost inexistent. It had sharp teeth and sharp nails, still covered in blood. It looked like some kind of illness or radiations, or maybe a combination of the two. 

“What the hell was that?” Mia shouted. 

Gallie had her eyes shut, probably unconscious again. Damn, it should have been a relaxing evening, now he had Gallie suffering from a cranial trauma and a demoniac thing chasing them. He lowered himself and laid Gallie on the ground, trying to be careful not to hurt her head. “Gallie, can you hear me?” He laid his hand on her cheek. He registered Mia gasping, probably seeing her friend unconscious again. “Hmm” Gallie wasn’t really forming coherent words, but the Doctor felt relieved anyway at the response. “Gallie, talk to us.” He tried again. “Shut up I want to sleep.” Gallie curled in a ball. He smiled a bit even if worried, she had obviously a commotion, but at least nothing worse. 

“She’s herself at least.” The Doctor frowned, she only shrugged in response.

“Come on, let’s get you somewhere more comfortable.” He moved her to a near couch, caressing her cheek again. 

“Is she going to be alright?” Mia had her eyes fixed on the blonde girl. She laughed, but she was nervous, her eyes holding more fear than it had ever held. She never seemed scared by an army of Sontarans or a fleet of Daleks, but when it came to Gallie’s wellbeing posed to threat, she was completely terrorised.“She will be.” She smiled, but her hands fidgeting betrayed her. “I hope you’re right, otherwise how am I going to explain _that_ to mum and dad?” He took her hands in his, trying to stop them moving. “Don’t worry, she will be up in no time.” She sighed relaxing, even if not completely. “So, what now Old Man?” 

That was a good question, the main idea was to understand in what kind of situation they really were in, discover what that not-so-very-human creature was and finally come up with a plan to bugger off.“Let’s see if the computers have registe-”

“Don’t move.” A man was pointing a gun at them. Really, by now it wasn’t really much of a surprise. The man eyed them. He was sweating and he had dark circle under his eyes, his hands were trembling, not a good thing, if he was nervous he was also bound to pull the trigger more easily. The Doctor rose his hands slowly. “I’m not armed and I don’t intend to hurt you either. I’m just trying to figure out what happened here.”

“Who are you? You don’t seem to be passengers, if any of them is still human.”

“ _Still_ human? What do you mean?” Mia piped in, coming to stand to the Doctor’s side. “The ship is under quarantine, the outbreak started in the stern and spread to the whole ship. I’m the only survivor of this part of the ship or of the whole ship for what I know, well at least that was what I believed until you came along.” So it was an illness and of a nasty kind from what he saw. “What sector do you come from?” 

“The fourth.” The Doctor answered, squeezing Mia’s hand to shut her up, but she just looked at him knowingly. “What about the other girl? Is she infected?” The man raised the gun again pointing it at Gallie. The Doctor panicked and came between the pistol and the girl. “Put that gun down, she has a cerebral commotion, she is not infected.” The man complied, putting the gun to his side, scrutinising them with suspicion. “So, judging by your clothes and the fact that you have your daughters with you, I assume you’re a civilian. What exactly are you? An engineer, a doctor?” He smiled, but it looked utterly wrong and chilling for the maniac glint in his eyes. 

“Engineer.” The man was walking towards the couch in which Gallie was laying. Mia squeezed the Doctor’s hand. “I’m John Smith. You’re… Ah, lieutenant Epstein. German?” He smiled to the man, always keeping Gallie in sight.

“Austrian, but my mother was English. And you?”

“Scottish.” The man had strange tremors cursing through his all body, like some kind of nervous tick. Lieutenant Epstein must have been in this room for quite a long time and part of his sanity had probably left him quite before. 

"Do you have ice?" The Doctor asked, slowly coming closer to where Gallie stood. “Ice?” The man was franticly tapping his fingers on his leg. “Yes, for her head.”

“Right, of course, I’m gonna get you some.” Epstein moved away to get the item. 

“Old Man?” Mia looked up at him, the same worry mirroring in their eyes. When the lieutenant returned the Doctor spoke. “Look, we’d like to get out of here, can I give a look at the computers? I could pilot us to a near colony, then let a team to disinfest whatever illness is afflicting the other passengers.” There was a flash of anger in lieutenant Epstein’s eyes. Mia flinched, putting her hand to the holster on her gun belt. “Of course, anything to get out of here.” The man smiled maniacally gesturing to look in the other room for the computers.

 

Most of the spaceship’s voyage informations were missing. There was the first half, boring for its normality, while the second half lacked of any indication, like the computers had shut down. There were some video recordings, probably from the surveillance cameras, skipping the first boring part, he recognised the symptoms he had seen on the man who had chased them before on others passengers. There were scenes of the brutality of those people, not people anymore, but there wasn’t any sign of the tapes that could link the boring life of a normal passenger spaceship to the zombie apocalypse that afflicted it now. 

“Old Man…”

“Hmm?”

“Have you checked the flight recorder?” She whispered, her eyes fixing on the other room. 

“I can’t find it, I think it’s been canceled.” He looked up at her. “What’s that psychopath doing?” “Nothing strange, at the moment at least, he seems to be fiddling with some bottles, whisky maybe?” The Doctor hummed and entered the engines’ files, trying to understand what could be done to save the ship from collapsing. “Have you found anything?” He jumped at the contact of Mia’s hand pressing on his back, but for a moment he swore he had felt a soothing hum in his mind, not the TARDIS’. It relaxed him, the warmth of her body reassuring him. “Not really, but look at this…” He showed her the datas on the computers. “The central part of the recordings are missing…” She whispered, looking up at him. “Look better…” She stared at the screen and suddenly her brows increased and then raised up in surprise. “They have been deleted, the datas, the recordings, everything that might show what happened.” He nodded, she was smart, well he already knew that, but every time she did or say something clever he grinned at her like it was the first time. “Doctor, I don't like the idea of that psycho staying near Gallie.” He looked at her. “We’ll keep an eye on him, I promise nothing will happen to her.” A promise he couldn’t kept, the closing doors between them and Gallie proving just how wrong he was. 


	6. Katabasis - part II

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello again! As I feared this chapter got reaally long, so there will be also a part three and then I promise we'll move on. Also I inserted a song/poem I wrote, I used the amazing music The Rains of Castemere as arrangement from Games of Thrones. If you wanna sing it this is the version I used https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r3CJ1RtN0fo  
> I also wanted to include the beautiful line Matt Smith's Doctor says in TNOTD and that hasn't made it to the episode. (“She was clever and brave and kind and funny. And had more love in one heart than I could ever have in two.)  
> As always I hope you enjoy it!

"We've been walking for hours, where the hell are we?” 

“I don’t have a detailed map of this sodding place in my mind!”

“I don’t give a damn, wave your stupid sonic, make one of your grand speeches, but take me back to the control room. My sister is in the hands of a mad maniac. She can’t even protect herself when she is well, what is going to happen now that she has a cerebral commotion?”

_Sister._  She had said sister, they were sisters, of course, the resemblance was clear even to a blind man. “Sister?” She looked away from him, biting her lower lip, she had just let slip a piece of information he clearly shouldn’t have known. “Yes, we are sisters. Happy now? I shouldn’t have told you.” He took her hand. “Why wouldn’t you? It was pretty obvious.” 

“Of course it is. It’s obvious to everyone, but not to you. Admit it, if I didn’t let it slip you wouldn’t have known.” She sighed, passing her hand through her hair, which risked to devour her limb. She was nervous, terrified even and probably tired. “It really sucks, you know? All this spoilers and foreknowledge thing is rubbish.” He snorted, of course it was rubbish, he knew it more than anyone, well except from his wife, she had known the price of time travel in a relationship. “Of course it does.” He squeezed her hand, smiling softly at her.

A loud metallic noise. There were multiple footsteps on the metallic grill of a corridor connecting two sections of the ship they had just passed. Another noise, this time more frantic, they creatures knew they were close. Mia grabbed her gun, ready to fire. The creatures came into sight, there were four of them, already charging toward them. The Doctor grabbed her hand and drag her into a door he had seen before. He pulled her in the room, shutting the heavy door with the help of his sonic. There was a loud banging, but the door seemed to oppose a good resistance to the attack. He turned around taking a good look at the room they were in, there were tables, flipped chairs scattered all around, some lights were out, but it was still quite well-lighted. It must have been the canteen of this section.

“We're in the fifth section. We're getting further away from the control room.” Mia said after she had regained her breath.

“Yes, but at least we are still alive.”  He moved to a near screen, sonicing it to enter the system. He was looking for the map of this labyrinthine ship, if he found it he could search for a safe way toward the control room. “Ah, ah!”

Mia rushed toward him at his exclamation. “Found the map?” She laid her chin on his shoulder, grabbing his arm for support. He found the contact a little surprising, after all he was still not a touching person, but at the same time he found comfort in her touch, much like he had with River's.

“Yes, we have to follow this route. It looks like the control room is a ring of conjunction of these three corridors, we walk this way and we should find ourselves to the left entrance of the room, the one right at the back of maniac lieutenant Epstein.” He smiled at her reassuringly, earning one back from her too.

“I don’t know about you, but I’m quite hungry, we could go search around for something to eat, after all we were supposed to have dinner among all the other things. What do you think?” She hummed in agreement, already scanning the room for the cabinets where food would be. She walked toward another room, she supposed the kitchen. 

“Mia! I think I’ve found some energy bars.” He shouted at her, but he didn’t get an answer, she had apparently disappeared in the next room. He found her kneeled near a corpse in what he assumed was the kitchen, she had a small instrument in her hands, like a harp, but smaller.

“Mia?” He scanned the man, but he was obviously dead. “Doctor, I have found this…” The man had written to _play it,_ probably the harp, _to chase hell away_. She looked up at him, showing him the spot on the floor where he had written the words with his own blood. He frowned inspecting more closely the written.

“Do you think it has any meaning?” She asked him, plucking a string.

“I don’t know, it certainly must have meant something to him.” He was looking at the wound the man had on his back. “The creatures are armed too. Not walking dead after all.”

There were more noises coming from the back of the kitchen where a door was. “We'd better move.” Mia grabbed the harp and followed the Doctor. 

 

  
They found themselves in another dark alley. He noticed Mia was lost in her thoughts, sometimes looking at the harp in her hands, sometimes just looking the darkness in front of them, without really watching it. Surely she had something on her mind, maybe Gallie or maybe the creatures. They heard other noises coming from behind. Again, the creatures were coming after them again.

"They're coming again." He glanced at the end of the corridor and calculated how much time they had.

"Ok, listen Mia. We need to split them, they are too many, we are never gonna block them if they come all at once. I'm going this way, hopefully drawing some of them toward me. There's a space of conjunction where the four alleys meet, two doors are already closed, we are going to close the other two. They will be trapped in the small square." Five minutes and the creatures would be at them.

"What about us? We are gonna get separated too." She looked up at him distractedly. 

"Only momentarily, there's another point of conjunction a few meters away." She nodded but kept staring at the damned harp. 

They both positioned themselves in front of the doors, ready to close them. Two minutes, the creatures were now visible and coming closer too. "Ready Mia? Three, two, one." He closed his door, but saw Mia starting playing the instrument she had been staring at the whole time. He shouted her name. But instead of Mia's screams he heard a soft familiar tune, too familiar. It was muffled by the wall that dived them, but when Mia started singing, the song became painfully familiar.

_Who do you think remembers you?_  
_When time itself forgot,_  
_Only a name on a strange strange stone_  
_That's all they left of you._

His eyes widened. It could’t be. She was singing in high gallifreyan. How could she possibly be singing in gallifreyan? That language was confined to his planet at the very edge of the universe, nobody in the rest of the cosmos knew how to speak it, well, except for him of course. And there she was, not only speaking in gallifreyan, but singing an ancient song only his people knew of. His people. Maybe she was one of them after all, _but how?_

_All alone, with only a rope of gold_  
_You raised against the Lords_  
_Now not a soul knows that name of your_  
_Nor the face you wore._

He stood there in the dark, his whole body pressed to the wall trying to hear her voice better. It was an old song, a sort of lullaby his people used to sing to children. He had sung it to River when her nightmares had plagued her sleep. She should have been the only other being to know it. River couldn’t have taught the girls a gallifreyan song, one had to be gallifreyan to speak the language, or at least partially Time Lord, like River. Humans would have never been able to speak it. It had something to do with the sounds or the fact that the act of speaking involved a psychic work too. and Mia was using her mind, he could feel it clearly now, her presence at the back of his mind. It was soothing and warm as River’s had been, only stronger than his wife’s.

_To break the chains you said you'd fought_  
_To free your people all_  
_Now time has been ripped from you_  
_And you from time wiped off._

He closed his eyes and imagined the night in which he had heard the melody for the first time. It had been his mother to teach it to him and it soon became a favourite of his. It talked about a rebel who had raised against the Time Lords, believing to free his people from an oppressive and cruel tyranny; but he only ended up being erased from history by the High Council. Everybody forgot him. However it was said that his young wife still remembered him, she carved his name on a stone, but was soon destroyed after being discovered. This song it’s literally the only thing that remains of him, the only way to honour his vane effort. 

_Only her, only her knows what she has lost_  
_Weeping for you all night long_  
_And now a cold stone guards over you_  
_With no memory of your heart or soul_

Her voice was beautiful, it reminded him of the sound the leaves of the trees behind his house made when the wind raised in the early spring afternoons. It reminded him of the nights spent at his windows watching the sky full of the stars he promised himself he would one day have seen. It reminded him of the children he once used to tuck into bed. It inexplicably reminded him of River, her curls and the shape of her nose; it reminded of all those little things he had forgotten about her because he had decided oblivion was more merciful than remembering what wouldn’t come back. He sighed. Mia just made him long for so much more than just Gallifrey, she made him long for something he didn’t think he had anymore: hope.

He ran toward the point where the two corridors joined each other. Was is it River that had taught her the song? If Mia wasn't human, was she a Time Lord? Well, Time Lady. He would have thought about a new regeneration of Romana or even the Rani, but there was Gallie too and they looked so much like each other, that being explained by the fact that they were sisters. Yes, but as much they resembled each other, most of all they resembled River. River. They were River's daughters, weren't they? They could have well been, they both had those crazy hair, Gallie seemed a shrunk version of his wife, not to mention Mia was as cheeky and brave as River was, had been. She even had a thing for big guns and getting nasty species angry. They were both clever, oh so clever, of course they couldn't be pudding brains. Maybe they were his too, but how? Was it before or after Darillium? Why would River take something like this away from him? It must have been after Augustus then, after their baby boy's dea- yes it must have been then, but why not telling him during their twenty-four years together? They could have raised both the girls together. Was is it right before the Library? After they had parted?

When he reached her he found her frozen in the middle of the corridor with the creatures fast asleep at her feet. He had been so stunned by Mia's singing that he hadn't wondered why their persecutors had ceased to make any noise. Now it made sense what that man back in the kitchen had tried to say, the music put the creatures to sleep.

Mia turned towards him with a satisfied smile. "Did you see that Old Man?"

He came closer to her and she took the sonic he still had in hand and proceeded to sonic the things on the floor. She kneeled on the floor scanning the creatures. He was still lost in his own thoughts when she called for him, obviously unaware of the fact he had heard her singing in gallifreyan.

"Old man, come here, the readings are quite odd." He snapped out of his thoughts and sat next to her, inspecting the creatures that looked at a nearer distance seemed more of decaying sick men than monsters. The screwdriver's readings were indeed strange, they had _Parniticon_ , an illness yes, but caused by a degenerate compound used to unnaturally speed up the evolutive process of a species. It wasn't an illness one would find on a travelling spaceship by accident, the passengers had been injected with that species' booster. 

But that captivating mystery was nothing compared to Mia and consequently to Gallie. He didn't want to confront them about it, not just yet, if he had just found what he hoped he had, he wouldn't scare them away by revealing what he wasn't supposed to know. That's why he needed to talk to River, maybe a River at Darillium, during one of those moments when past him would have been asleep or distracted and she would have stolen his ship. Then it hit him, maybe she knew something, maybe Mia knew of a future meeting between the two of them, he would have asked them both.

"Ok, let's move, we don't know how long they are going to be out." Mia had said at some point, and they did, they moved on from the corridor and that hope the Doctor was still clinging to. 

 

  
They walked for a while in silence and the Doctor tried to think about the mystery the creatures were, a mystery that was nothing compared to what the girls were, the doubts were consuming him. 

"So, how did you know music would nock them out?"

"I wasn't sure, but it reminded me of something."

"Of what?"

"Have you noticed that this place looks like some sort of underworld?"

"What? Like Dante's hell?"

"Well I had in mind Enea's but yes darling Dante's will do too." He raised an eyebrow. Oh, she wasn't... "Yes, well Beatrice is said to have had the reddest hair and whose got the most angelic face of all?" She batted her eyes at him, gaining a groan of disapproval.

"I would have married him, but Zygons got in the way and the only way to discover what they wanted was to marry one." She sighed dramatically. "I was going to kill my husband for him, but he married another woman, had children. In the end there was was no point in staying, I had to fake my death." She smiled sadly. "At least it did well for his inspiration, he wrote me some really good poems." 

He started laughing and she was glad for that, at least he had lighten up the mood. "Really? You, a space cowgirl that would have settled down for an Italian poet in XIII century Florence?"

"Well, he was a good boy and such a passionate lover." She underlined every syllable present in the word passionate and when he flinched she smirked satisfied. "Besides you are one to talk, you, the hippiest, does it even exists as a word?" She shrugged. "The hippiest pacifist of the whole Universe, married one of the most dangerous woman with a kink for guns."

It was his turn to shrug, putting his hands in his pockets with a proud grin, only ruined by the sad look in his eyes. "She was clever and brave and kind and funny. And had more love in one heart than I could ever have in two. They made her believe she was a psychopath her whole life, but what she really was is amazing." She squeezed his hand nodding softly. 

"But you're right, after all as humans say love is blind." He concluded smiling. She winked at him taking his arm in hers. He knew she was worried for Gallie, her sister, even if she joked and plastered the brightest smile she could muster, her mind was always directed to the girl trapped in the control room with a commotion and a psycho. He knew how she felt because he was worried too, with the addition of her newly found secret, her ability to speak gallifreyan.

But now there was only a sector to go and then they would rescue Gallie, if only would have been that easy.

"Doctor, why is this door closed?" Mia sighed annoyed.

“I don’t know, it shouldn’t be closed…”

Just then he saw Mia being grabbed from behind and drugged with some substance, the same substance that knocked him out seconds after, but before falling to the ground he registered smoke, some sort of sedative gas then, and an old man wearing a mask, white hair contrasting with his dark skin. He tried to reach for Mia, who was already knocked cold on the floor, he soon stopped fighting and greeted unconsciousness.

 

 

 


	7. Katabasis - part III

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello people! Here we go with the last part of this looong chapter. As always let me know if you like it and if you have any request just write it in a comment. Enjoy the chapter :)

He found himself laying on the ground, grass tickling his palms and stars above him. He knew those stars. _Gallifrey_. He sat up and heard singing, it came from a house, an old one he immediately recognised, it was the house in which he had raised his kids with his first wife. He followed the melody, entering the house, which was warmly lighted. The song ended and everything seemed quite, except for someone upstairs softly padding. He walked toward the source of noise, making his way upstairs. At the end of the corridor there was a room, its door ajar, allowing a gentle light to creep out in the hallway’s semi darkness. Behind the door he found River, apparently waiting for him. Was he dreaming? It had happened before, oh so many time.He hoped nothing woke him up, at least for a while. 

“River” He breathed in surprise and awe. 

“Speak quietly my love, I’ve just put him to bed.” 

“Him?” He asked confused. 

“Augustus. He didn’t want to go to sleep, I had to sing all the songs I knew.” She smiled softly. Oh he had forgotten that little smile that always followed any thought about their son. He sighed and shut his eyes in pain. It was a dream, only in a dream it could be possible that Augustus was still alive and River not trapped in a computer. He opened his eyes and took in a breath. 

“He is dead, River. You’re dead. You’re all dead.” He said anguished, coming closer to the bed she was sat on in a comfy nightgown she had begun to use after Augustus’ birth. 

“I know.” She lowered her eyes sadly, but then she looked straight at him. “But don't you dare weep over yourself because of us. Sadness belongs to the dead and you are alive, my love.” 

“Am I? It hasn’t felt like that after you left for the Library. The only way I can cope is to forget, what sort of life is that? Running from all the ones I have lost, never looking back, because it hurts.” She took his hand drawing symbols of understanding and compassion on his palm. “Ieven tried to forget you, River."

“You know you are forgiven, always and completely.” He connected his forehead to hers. 

“I never told you when you were alive and the only way I can manage to say it now is in the recesses of my mind to the memory my brain has of you, but... I love you, River.” He leaned in and gently kiss her. They parted and she nodded smiling. He tried to make out the colour of her eyes, but the dim light didn’t allow their true colour to stand out. He had completely deleted that piece of her from his mind. “As much as I'd love for you to stay, you have to wake up.” He nodded slowly. “Could I see Augustus first?”

“Of course, my love.”

 

He woke up with a start, his whole body numb and his head foggy. He remembered River and their baby boy, Gallifrey's skies and ancient lullabies. He turned to his side and caught sight of red curls. _Mia!_ He tried to sat up, but whatever drug that damned bunkers had used made his movements difficult. He dragged himself nearer to her, collapsing on her. “Geez Old Man! You‘re crashing me!” She sat up, stretching her legs. 

He laughed, at least she was okay. “How long have we been out?” Mia had metabolised the drug quicker than he had and that was saying a lot. “An hour? Give or take.” He answered her, scanning their surroundings, they were in a big room, its structure similar to a Faraday cage. “The bastard is not here.” 

“Did you see where he went?” 

“No, how are your legs?” 

He tried to stand up and even though they still seemed a little bit wobble they resisted. “Cranky, but I can stand up.” 

“Then, let's go.”

“And where do you think you're going?” The old man exclaimed, making the Doctor freeze. 

“As far away from you as we can, love.” Mia glared at him with a scary smirk. 

“And why would you do that?”

“Because you've slowed us down towards our goal, meaning that I'd very much like to tear you to tiny bits for it.”

He stared at her incredulous, what happened to the cheeky joyous Mia? That was probably Mia with the fear of loosing her sister. He put a hand on her arm, conveying calming thoughts to her, now knowing she could hear them. “We just want to go to the control room.” The Doctor tried to show himself less menacing, which was quite difficult seeing the body he got this time around.

“That's the thing, us, survivors don't go there, it's where the demon is." If the man hadn't drugged them he would have probably been tented to pity him. 

“What? You mean lieutenant Epstein?” Mia asked confused. 

“Don't say it!” He shouted widening his eyes. 

“When did the decease started spreading?” The Doctor asked, knowing that if a man had been idealised and turned into the devil himself then it had been a long time. 

“Forty years ago, I was only twenty five at the time.” The man lowered his eyes, clutching the beret he had in his hands.

“We've been in the control room, but we couldn't see what happened, it has been deleted.” Mia tried to prompt the man to explain.

“Of course it has, he covered to himself all the evidences of what he has done. He became mad after only a three years of travel.” The man sighed, understanding that his prisoners were unaware of the story behind the lieutenant. “Nobody knows why it happened, he was the best of the commanding crew, one day he just killed the captain and her assistant. The ship was transporting more than civilians, hided in the third section were tons of a new chemical weapon, the _Particon._ The lieutenant used it on all the sectors. Lots died after a couple of weeks, some were immune, but for others the virus was even worse. They didn't die, but for them it wasn't life either. They started loosing humanity in favour of physical improvements. They started killing others. We had to hide, fighting them is impossible, we can only run.”

It explained everything, from the presence of _Particon_ in the creatures to Epstein's madness. “Do you know how to reach the control room quicker? My sister is there with the lieutenant.”Her voice broke, her eyes wide in fear. The Doctor put an arm around her, trying to give her strength. 

“How long has she been there?” 

“Five hours.”

“Then I'm sorry, but she's probably already dead. You two should come with me, the sixth sector is our base, where everyone immune to the disease is.” 

“Forget it. I'm going to get my sister, alive” she paused looking determined at the man “or dead.”

“What sector are we in now?” The Doctor asked.

“The third.” 

“If you don't want to help us it's okay, but now we need to go. Do you know of a shorter way?” The Doctor asked. 

“Yes, there's a duct, large enough for an adult to crawl inside. It's safe, but it doesn't arrive directly at the control room, you have to enter the left door and there you might find some of the monsters.” The old man explained and then led them to the duct he had talked about. 

 

 

They had been crawling on their elbows for a while, reaching the second sector. Only another one and they would be in front of the control room. They had been in silence for the whole time, their heavy breathing the only sound. “Are you all right Mia?” He asked turning his head to take a glance at her. 

“I'll be when I see her safe and sound.” She hissed and he sighed. “I love to go on adventures with her, but she's not like me. She has no guns, nothing to protect herself. She thinks her brains are the only thing she needs. I utterly disagree. I'm not proud of my love for guns, but at least I can protect us, a clever speech is not gonna save her from a blaster.” 

“What's wrong with clever speeches? I lived more than I can remember and the only weapons I have ever had were my brains and a sonic screwdriver.” 

“You did, but she’s not like you. You never contemplate the possibility of dying, she does.” 

He stopped in the middle of the duct. “What do you mean?”

“Nothing, it’s just she gives up more easily, especially to protect others. When was the last time you have died for someone else?”

“Did it happened before?”

“She’s still here, isn’t she? Well, at least for now.”

He didn’t answer, if they really were Time Ladies, Gallie could have already regenerate at least once. _Sacrificing for others_. He really hoped she didn’t get it from River, the tendency of putting others, well him and her parents, before her had almost brought him on the brink of insanity. But that only applied if they were River’s, didn’t it? 

He had to find a way to reopen their timelines, at least long enough to let him talk to her, to let him ask her if this supposition of his was just an undreamt fantasy he had, another way of coping with what the universe had deprived him of: everything. Clara and his memories of her first, his wife then. 

“My wife was the same by the way, keeping scarifying herself for others, for me.” He gave a short laugh, but it felt so caustic in his mouth. “That’s how we met for the first time, well our both first times. The first time she met me she gave up all of her remaining lives for me, almost dying in the process. The first time I met her she died in front of me and I didn’t know a thing about her, I couldn’t do a thing.” He felt her stop and he turned around. She stared at him straight in the eyes and cupped his face in her hands, earning a wide-eyed gaping face from him. “Doctor, have you ever heard of Orpheus and Eurydice myth?”

“If you mean the guy that quietened half dead people with his music, then yes, pretty much what you have done today…What does it have to do with-”

“No, I don’t refer to that…”

“He went to the underworld in order to save his spouse.” He laughed heavy hearted. “He lost her at the last moment, he could have gotten her back, but one step was all it took to have her stolen back by darkness.”

“It’s true, but he was too impatience and screw it all up. He had the possibility to have her back, but he also had her in their climb back from the underworld and then he had the chance to tell Eurydice what he may never had before.”

“Mia, what are you implying?” Could it be that she knew of a future encounter between Riverand him?

“Nothing, but if you ever get the chance Orpheus let slip, don’t screw it up, treasure it even if the way from the depths of the underworld to the light of the day is short. Tell them how much you love them. Treat every moment you have left with the ones you love as they could be swallowed by blackness at any time, because they can, that’s the way it works and will always do.” She smiled sadly at him and kissed his forehead. “Now let’s go.”

They kept going, the hot duct making them sweaty and more tired than they would have been if air actually passed in it. 

The Doctor felt more tired than he thought possible, maybe it was all he had learnt about the girls that day, maybe it was the fact that there was a chance he could see his wife again even if for the last time. The girls were making him confront everything he had relegated to his past, lost and so far away from reach. There was all this hope, all this anguish, all this fear for something he wasn’t even sure about. 

“I think we’ve arrived.” The Doctor said, while scanning the corridor he had at his feet from the opening of the duct. “Is there anyone?”

“No, or at least it doesn’t seem so. You don’t have that harp with you, do you?” The Doctor asked sliding down on the floor of the corridor, at last receiving some air. Mia quickly followed him and stood beside him. 

Just as they stood to face the door, they heard the creatures coming. “Mia, I suggest you start playing that harp…” She nodded, grabbing the instrument and started playing it. It wasn’t the same song she had sung before, of course not. They were already in front of them. She started singing and they slowed down. She was singing in english now, an Earth lullaby. The creatures seemed dazed, but they were still moving toward them, the song wasn’t having the same effect it had had the first time. He frowned and Mia tried another song, but it didn’t help much. The Doctor grabbed her harm and guided her forward. “Keep singing.” She nodded and let him drag her towards the door. 

He pointed the screwdriver to the door and it started unlocking. He didn’t open it widely, only enough for them to pass it through. So when Mia stopped singing he grasped her and ushered her inside, quickly sealing it again. 

The scene in front of them was both terrifying and hilarious. Everything in the room was upside down, there must have been some sort of collusion, Gallie fighting her aggressor probably, but they also found Gallie with a pan in her hands and Epstein passed out on the floor. Mia and the Doctor kept looking between the unmoving body and the girl. _Where the hell had she gotten a pan?_ Mia launched herself to her sister, who let go of the pan, the tumble making a metallic noise that made him grimace. “Are you alright?” Mia asked in the girl’s hair. 

“That maniac thought I was his sister and let his hands wander nevertheless. I- I found this and hit him, I didn’t want to but…” Mia tightened her grip around her body. “No buts, if it was up to me I would have already killed him, and that may be what I do next.” She broke the hug to stare at her. Gallie seemed a little bit ruffled, but other than that she had no visible wounds. “Where the hell have you found a pan? We’re on a space ship, in a control room…”

“He has a small kitchen…”

“I suggest we leg it now, between the maniac sleeping beauty and the wacko walking deads I’d rather go.” Mia said glaring at Epstein’s unconscious body. 

“Have you discovered what happened here?” Gallie asked looking between the two of them. 

“That psycho here killed the captain and spread an ugly disease caused by a not-so-clever chemical weapon.” She sighed looking at how much of a wreck her sister was at the moment. “We would have arrived before if a man didn’t drugged us and kept us prisoners for over an hour.” 

“A man? You mean there are survivors?” Gallie frowned confused. 

“Yes, but none of our business, now let’s-” But Gallie put her hands on her hips glaring at her sister and knew what came next. 

“What about the survivors? Aren’t we going to help them?” Gallie said crossing her arms over her chest at Mia’s sigh in response. 

“First we get you to the TARDIS and have a proper look at your head.” The Doctor said, not really caring about the remaining passengers and more concerned to get out of the sodding ship, but she only raised her eyebrow higher and scowled at the two of them. “I’m fine, but the passengers aren’t…” 

Mia snorted. “Come on Gallie no time to be the hero.” 

Giving up any hope of convincing Mia, Gallie directed her eyes to the Doctor. “You won’t allow them to die, will you?” He stared at her, but the sparkle of trust and hope in those so familiar eyes made him crumble. He sighed. “No, of course not.” She smiled, her eyes dancing with self-satisfaction for the triumph. Mia grumbled something about him being a softy, but Gallie had persuaded her too. “Right, right.” Mia extracted something from a pocket of her jacket. His eyes widened. Handcuffs. _Really? Handcuffs?_ If she wasn’t River’s daughter and Amy Pond’s granddaughter, then nobody else was. “At least he won’t give us problems.” Mia shrugged and the Doctor grinned probably the first grin in a very long time.

 

 

They had saved the ship and their passengers, landing on a near Earth colony. Lieutenant Epstein had being handed to a psychiatric hospital and the people affected by the _Particon_ were treated in special wards, however too much time had passed since they had contracted the illness and the process had become irreversible. Since they were at the hospital the Doctor had insisted on Gallie being visited, just to make sure she was ok, it turned out she really was and for that he was grateful.

He had brought the girls to a little restaurant on the Moons of Push, where he had been years before with Rose. It had been a quiet evening, peculiar for the usual style of their encounters, but nice all the same. He had learnt about their study courses, they had both started attending River's archeology lectures, but after her last expedition, while Mia kept frequenting the course, Gallie had graduated in engineering and was now preparing her doctorate. When she was still alive, River had even persuaded the headmaster to let Gallie have her own office.

“But the headmaster gave me a junk room. Professor Song was furious, but she used that little room and transformed it in a huge place.” 

“How?” The Doctor asked intrigued.

“I understood it had to do with something she stole from your TARDIS, bigger on the inside technology.” 

“Time Lord technology then.” He said suggestively.

“I suppose so, isn't that what you are? A Time Lord?” She said raising an eyebrow. “Yes, and the last still wandering the Universe, well, at least for now.” He said sending her a look. “Yes, at least for now.” Gallie conceded suspiciously. “Would you like to see it?” Mia intervened, sensing the subject should be changed, she knew the Doctor wasn't a fool and he probably had a couple of suspicions about them. They hadn't really being subtle, sometimes she did it on purpose, she wished she could tell him who she was, no more lies or illusions. 

“See what?" The Doctor asked.“Her office at university, it's really amazing. Professor Song helped us arrange it and it turned out really well.” Mia smiled at him. “Oh, maybe another time, I haven’t tied up, there are wires and stuff all over the floor.” Gallie said smiling awkwardly, making him smile. “But next time you pick us up I will give you a tour.” She winked at him, her eyes sparkling with that light River’s eyes had too when excited about something to come. 

 


	8. Augustus Song

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello everybody! Sorry for the delay, but I struggled quite a lot to write this chapter and I think you'll understand why, the topic is not of the easiest, but I tried to write it as well as I could. I've mentioned Augustus in my previous chapters and now it seemed the right time to introduce him properly to you all. I should warn you this chapters contains child death, so if you want you can skip it, there's no major story twist in here. Hope you enjoy it x

He was playing his electric guitar looking down at Earth's Moon below his dangling legs. Playing helped him thinking and right now he needed any help he could get to sort out how he felt about what he had discovered. A part of him told him it wasn’t even a certainty, it was more of a possibility. Maybe those two girls were River’s, but maybe not his. The worse thing was that if they really were River’s, he wanted them to be his too.

However without further investigation he couldn't know for sure, after all he had assumed their eventual parental bond only by hearing Mia singing in gallifreyan, maybe he had jumped to the wrong conclusion, maybe they were only from Gallifrey, but nothing more than belonging to the same species tided them.  
His thoughts however had flowed in the direction of what rationally should still be impossible, but that evidences seemed to sustain: he could be their father. He almost had no doubt that they were River's, after all they were two versions of his wife.

Gallie was a shrunken version of River, all blond curls and those elusive greenish eyes, maybe that's how River's eyes looked like. He liked her soft smile that portrayed so well her kindness and that sort of naïvety, that hopeful wish of finding the goodness in everything; it reminded him of little Melody and a little bit of his former self too.  
Mia on the other hand was tall and all curves like River had been and had the reddest hair he had ever seen, well, apart from his Amelia Pond. _Mia_ , he suspected she had been named after his Scottish fury. But she didn't remind him of Amy Pond alone, no, Mia had the passionate vehemence of Mels and that preoccupying love for guns that had accompanied her regeneration into River Song.

Maybe he still had to father them, highly improbable, or maybe he already had without ever knowing. Still if they really were their daughters, River would have at least mentioned it. Wouldn’t she? But then, even if she had hided it, he would have missed it all, their birth, their first word, their first steps.

He didn’t know what he wanted to be true anymore. He clung to the hope that there was still a piece of his wife walking the universe and the girls were just beautiful, but on the other hand he was terrified of being a father again. He didn't know if he could go through all of it again. It hadn’t been long since the last time, River and him had two children, well, should have had.

The first time she had only made it to the fourth month. River was devastated, she had wanted that child more than life itself. It had happened when she was still in prison, at the end of her sentence. She had waited to tell him fearing to put his hope high only to have it snatched away, but that was what had happened. He had only known for a month, a blissful lapse of time in which his idiotic old self had already picked out names and started planning places to show his baby and toys to buy. He had found her at her parents’ house, sobbing in the arms of a very distraught Amy. He had never seen River cry that hard, he would have preferred he never had to. When he had started reading her journal he had found a blank page in her diary with a date and the picture of a scan. After that day she hadn’t talk about that baby anymore and according to her diary she had sworn to herself she wouldn’t have had anymore children.

But then there had been Augustus. He had been River’s life quite literally. For the brief time he had been in the universe their baby boy had his mother wrapped around his little finger. He loved his baby very much, of course he did, but he was never brave enough to love him unconditionally as River did, it was almost as if he knew something would happen to him, that it was too good to be true and soon he too would have been snatched away from the Doctor. It had happened after Manhattan and it had been quite the shock for them both, but when Augustus made his entrance in the world all their uncertainty and doubts had vanished in thin air. Augustus Song had the fiery red hair of his grandmother, his mother greenish blue eyes and his eleventh self’s clumsy curiosity for the world. They agreed he would have a normal life, with a home on a safe planet, school and friends. River settled down immediately and he tried to adjust to their new domestic life too.

He remembered the first time they brought him home, three days after he was born. The baby in a light blue onesies sound asleep on their bed, puffing and his eyes flickering under his eyelids like he was already dreaming of impossible worlds and faraway galaxies. River had been laying beside him attentively watching him like he was _some kind of unexplainable miracle_ , as River had written in her journal. And he was, he was their tiny miracle. The first times every little movements he made were something of a magic, he remembered staring at him in awe as his feet kept kicking his blanket away almost as if he wanted to run away in search of something new to discover.

For his first birthday River insisted to take him to the seaside, somewhere on Earth, she wanted him to have the normal childhood she hadn’t had the possibility to live, then when old enough he would have travelled the universe saving planets or causing trouble, probably both if he ever got the chance. They had chosen a quite beach in the south of England, bringing a cake with a candle to lit too. The temperature was warm enough to allow them all to bath in the sea. Sometimes he still dreamt about Augustus’ happy squeals and River delighted face.

By the age of four Augustus Song was a lively little thing with big glasses, a radiant grin and an incredible passion for music. He kept River up until late begging for just another song or lullaby and he would have woken his mother early in the morning playing one of the instruments the Doctor had brought him. At that time he was a fan of the guitar and the danwica, something similar to a lyre, only gallifreyan. He had loved watching him playing it, he would stuck his tongue out in concentration, his big glasses sliding to the tip of his nose.

Augustus was five and half years old when he started school. He had waken them up at dawn, jumping up and down on their bed. One thing was sure, he had been super excited and no matter how much River and him had tried to conceal it they had been too. He had watched him leave to catch the school bus with a school bag bigger than he was, River had pointed out he wouldn’t need the thick gallifreyan fairytale book the Doctor had given him as a present for his fourth birthday, but he had insisted, a couple of _please mum_ and those big puppy eyes River blamed him for and his wife had easily complied. Augustus waved them goodbye with a sloppy grin his hand pressed to the glass. When the yellow bus disappeared from their line of view, he didn’t miss the apprehensive wrinkles on River’s forehead, nor the way her eyes watered. He wrapped an arm around her shoulder and said: “You know that nothing is going to happen to him, right?” She sighed in response. “Of course, of course, it’s only that it’s the first time he leaves home without one of us.” “He’s gonna be fine.” He smiled at her and clapped his hands going toward the house, she followed him. “Now, shall we pop a tiny bit forward?” She smacked his arm playfully, rolling her eyes. “No cheating sweetie, I thought we agreed on that already.” She raised her eyebrow sternly. “Just a tiny bit? Don’t you want to know how his first day at school was?” “Oh, knowing him, he is gonna talk us to death about it.” “Exactly River! I can’t wait.” He gave her his best pout. “Ok, ok listen up, we don’t skip forward” The Doctor groaned. “Hush, we don’t skip forward, but we find _something_ _interesting_ to do, while waiting.” She smirked suggestively. He stood there staring at her until what _something interesting_ meant came to his mind. He returned a devilish smile at her too. “And what might _something interesting_ would be?” “Oh, I’ve got a few ideas, but none of them has you dressed.” His cheeks flushed, but his eyes darkened.  
Hours later Augustus came back with that excited grin he had when he had left. He told his parents everything he had seen, done and heard, all the new children he had played with and talked to. After many soothing lullabies to put him to sleep, he closed his eyes in his mother’s arms, while she was still stroking his hair.

He landed his TARDIS putting the stabilisers on, he had bought a fairytale book from Earth for Augustus and flowers for River, they had had a stupid argument and of course he had run away. When he landed he found River laying asleep on the sofa, with a very wake Augustus, but even if he didn’t want to sleep anymore his little boy stood snuggled on his mother, cherishing her touch. He surely was a mummy boy and even though he was seven years old now, he had no problem in showing it. He neared the sofa trying not to wake his wife and depositing the present he had brought on the coffee table. “Hello daddy.” Augustus whispered, putting his finger on his mouth when his father took a too noisy step making his mother stir. “Be quite, mummy is tired, her students made her head hurt.” He smiled softly at the concern his boy was showing for River. The Doctor opened his arms. “Come here little space musician.” Augustus looked at his mother and disentangled himself from her as quietly as he could, which obviously wasn’t that quite. River woke up, a little bit confused, her eyes still clouded by sleep and ache. Augustus bit his bottom lip, feeling guilty. “I’m sorry mummy I woke you up.” River smiled caressing their boy’s cheeks. She raised her eyes to him, arching an eyebrow at the flowers on the coffee table. He took them and offered to her. “I’ve seen them in Provence and couldn’t resist.” He gave her the best apologetic look he could muster. “Am I forgiven?” The Doctor asked, handing his wife the flowers. River sighed and shook her head in amusement. “Always and completely, sweetie.” Augustus smiled at seeing his parents making up. “Have you brought me a present too?” Augustus asked hopeful looking at the book on the coffee table. The Doctor nodded grinning like a child with the fairytale book under his chin to show the boy. He let out a shriek of joy seeing the book and flung his arms around his father’s neck. “Easy little man or mummy’s head is gonna get worse.” He said smiling a sympathetic smile at River who had shut her eyes in pain, but who couldn’t help a grin herself at her son’s enthusiasm for fairytale books. Augustus immediately turned on his heels facing his mother. “Sorry mummy.” “Don’t worry, my love, only try not to shout.” He nodded furiously going over the couch to plant a sonorous kiss on his mother’s cheek.

By the age of nine and half Augustus had the intelligence of a human adult and the playfulness only a child could have. River had bought him a piano and half of his day was spent playing it, the other with his classmates. He had lots of friends and for that he was grateful, he had had a lonely childhood, apart from the Master.  
He had materialised as usual in a corner of the living room, specifically designed for the purpose of his ship landing. He heard the door opening and in came a very distraught River, her hair was even wilder than usual, her eyes red rimmed. "River..." He whispered, concern filling him, when he didn't hear Augustus voice behind his mother. She sniffed, quickly rubbing a tear from her cheek. “Doctor.”  
“Where's Augustus?” She had to contain herself to not starting crying. “Sit down.” She gestured to the sofa. “River, where's Augustus? What happened to him?”  
“Sit.”  
“Tell me what happened to my son!”  
She stared at him unfazed, deep sadness and anguish in her eyes. “He's in hospital now, I came here to bring him his toys and some clothes.” She sighed and he frowned. “Is he hurt?” She shook her head no. “It's worse than that. I took him to his paediatrician, lately he hasn't been his usual self, no jumping up and down, he didn't even speak that much. He laid on the sofa and watched television all afternoon. He has been always tired, at first I thought it was a flue or something, even though he is a Time Lord, but after a couple of days he only got worse. It turns out he is not Time Lord enough.” She started crying and he wanted to cry too, because she still didn't answer his question. “River, what's the matter with him?” She let out a shaken breath. "His left heart has given out, has been for a while, but I didn't notice." She lowered her eyes. The Doctor sighed, passing a hand over his face. “Is he-” He paused, not knowing if he could continue the sentence or worse, hear the answer he dreaded the most. “Is he going to make it?” She shook her head. “Not according to the doctor, his biology needs the second heart and even with a machine the second heart has been compromised too.” She looked up at him. “Is he able to regenerate?” He didn't know, but it could be a hope. “I don't know…” She nodded. "I'm going to retrieve his toys." He nodded absent-mindedly “Take the danwica too.” It was Augustus’ favourite instrument, he had given it to the boy for his birthday.

The next months saw River and him arguing, hoping and crying, but never in front of Augustus, who probably saw the anguish in his parents’ eyes anyway. They tried their best to wear smiles and cheeriness, as they didn't know he was doomed. River kept singing to him and he tried to tell him the best adventures he had ever been on, he had even carved miniaturised versions of his TARDIS, Daleks, Cybermen and Silurians out of wood. So when he told him his great stories he would accompany his words with the motion of the toys he had made and for a moment Augustus wasn't in a grey oppressive hospital room, deep down probably knowing that those adventures he was listening to would always remain days heard and never lived.  
One day he had asked with big hopeful and tired eyes. “Daddy, could you show me the Universe?” He gaped at him, not knowing what to answer, he couldn't leave the hospital, his second heart could give out at any moment and he didn’t want it to happen while in space, without River. “I don't think we can leave the hospital, little man.” The way his son's face had fallen made him want to wrap him in his arms and run toward the TARDIS to just give him what he wanted. “And what would mummy do if she doesn't find you here when she arrives? She would literally kill me.” He tried to laugh, but Augustus only gave a sad smile. “We need your heart to get better, but when you do we will visit every zoo in the Universe, I'll even bring you to every human concert I can think about.” He paused staring at those beautiful eyes he got from his mother. “And I'll show you the stars, oh so many that you'll have enough of it.” His small smile and sad eyes morphed into a grin of sparkling eyes, he almost looked like he did before all of that started, when he tired his mother so much she would sleep eight hours straight, when he was a bundle of excitement and music. He would have never see his little boy running around the house with a cape made out of a kitchen cloth and his danwica in hands. He still likes to remember him that way, because that was his little boy and always will. “I'm tired daddy, could you show me the stars with your head?” The Doctor's eyes widened, River had forbidden him to put his to sleep with what he called dad skills but he could give him some of his memories and paint his dreams of stars and nebulas, of galaxies and parallel universes. If he couldn't give his son a future full of adventures, he will give him dreams full of those.

The Doctor closed his eyes, putting his guitar on his ship's floor and reaching for River’s journal, securely kept in his breast pocket. The smooth familiar texture of it brought him back to reality. He opened it. He had read his wife's journal pages about Augustus, but he never dared going past his death. He couldn't bare it, after all he had inflicted her even more anguish by running away from her. But he had to, he felt the need to reconcile with his son's death. Oh, the pain would never go away he knew that, but if he had the girls now to look after he had to learn to breath that pain away even if just a little bit. He opened her diary, there was a blank page between their last day together and what he saw was the day of his funeral.

_Dear diary,_   
_Today was the day of the funeral, I decided to give him a Gallifreyan one. I sang to him, like I always do did when I put him to bed. I sang his favourite song, that old lullaby the Doctor used to hum to me when the nightmares were still too vivid immediately after we got married. He wasn't there, he didn't even came to say goodbye to his own son. Jack was there, granddad was, even Anthony, but not him._   
_I called him, but he didn't answer. The last time I’ve seen him was at the hospital, I still had Augustus in my arms. He stood there staring at him and then ran away, like he always does; and now I've no idea when I'm gonna see him again._   
_The pages of my diary are finishing, that can only mean my time with him is ending, I only hope my life is too, because living without the comfort of his presence, even if rare at this point, it's unbearable._   
_I only hope it could only just stop, the pain, the longing. One day I'm a daughter, a mother, a wife the next I'm nothing. Only alone._

He closed her diary and took a deep breath, god, wasn’t he a big sod. He now understood fully why River had believed he didn’t love her back on that space ship. From her prospective he had left her because he blamed for the death of their child. Total rubbish, things like that happened to Gallifreyans too, it was rare, but some children didn’t develop the second heart fully and that compromised the other.  
“Doctor?” Gallie came in the console room in her pyjamas rubbing her sleepy eyes. He had almost forgot he had them on board. He tucked River’s journal back in his breast pocket.  “What is it?” He asked, a frown making his menacing eyebrows almost stick together. “A nightmare, I couldn’t go back to sleep so came here. You?” She asked nodding in his direction. “Just playing a little bit the guitar.” He answered shrugging. “What was your nightmare about?” He asked absentmindedly. “That space ship maniac.” She sighed, coming closer to him and sitting next to him on the cold floor. “Right.” He mumbled to himself. “So, penny for your thoughts?” She asked knowing he hadn’t just being playing the guitar. His eyes widened at her expression, it reminded him of Mels and Berlin and rushed marriage proposals. “None of your business, goldilocks.” He said poking at her head playfully, smiling when she scrunched her face in a funny way. “Well, at least will you play something on the guitar? I love it when you do.” She was smiling that soft smile, her eyes all hope and tenderness, it was obvious he would have return that smile, he was convinced only River could elicit. “Any preferences?” He asked taking the guitar from the floor. “The one called Clara, I like that song.” She smiled gently and he could only return it. “Okay, but only one, you’re in your pyjamas only, you are already gonna end up with a frozen buttock.” She laughed and he did too.

 


End file.
